


There Are Hearts In The Ice

by qwanderer



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Dark, Gen, Spoilers, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 15:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1270903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Jotunn's strength lies in his heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are Hearts In The Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for T.A.H.I.T.I. (also look what the title spells!)

A Jotunn's strength lies in his heart. 

A thousand of them leapt to battle for Midgard, for land that could support them when their own world was turning still and sterile. This one - this one stood before the Aesir, defending his people proudly. This one was torn asunder by the arc of a great golden sword. He fell there, amid the snows of Midgard, unable to move although his heart still beat. As long as a Jotunn's heart is beating, he lives on. 

This one, the snows covered, and the snow pressed in on his battered body, pressed down, turned to ice, and with his little remaining strength, he could not shape it, could not make room for his body to regenerate itself. His heart beat, but he would remain this way, maimed, in agony, missing half his body, until rescue came. 

This one would wait a very long time. 

Heartbeat followed heartbeat, building up to minutes, hours, days, years. More than a thousand years. This one was in constant pain, and for much of that millennium, all his thoughts were a constant litany of, _let me die. Let me die._

But a Jotunn's strength lies in his heart, and his heart was undamaged. 

So he lived. 

On and on and on, until he was found. But not by Jotunn. By humans. Humans looking for something else, someone else, from the way the bearded one narrowed his disappointed eyes. One asked what should be done with the ragged blue lump of flesh. The bearded one replied, "It's not Steve, so I don't care. Do whatever you want with it." 

They brought him to a place where he was studied, prodded, cut apart even farther. He had room to heal now, except they drained away his blood, his heart's blood, drop by desperate drop. All the hurt/healing, all the hope/desperation. They drained away everything that was left to him, over and over again. 

_Let me die. Let me die._

Phil Coulson had woken up with the echo of endless emptiness in his bones. The sense of time, entirely too much time, spent not in this body. 

He remembered Tahiti, he remembered warmth, but still something pulled him, something compelled him, to find out more. Because there was something more - a lot more - than eight seconds. 

He'd found some of his answers, but even five days didn't seem long enough, surgeries didn't seem bad enough, to leave him with that echoing sense of infinity, of eternity, somehow folded back into his compact, finite form. 

And then he set eyes on this body, and the memories branded into his blood flooded back. 

This one. 

_Let me die._

Phil... could do that, today. 

"This place is going up," Phil whispered to the unseeing eyes. "Your heart will be torn to pieces. It's not so bad, compared to... this." 

And then Phil Coulson turned and left. He had a job to do. If he succeeded, Skye would never know the terrible plea carried in the Jotunn's blood. 

It was too long, it was too cold, it was too terrible for anyone to carry. 

Phil wished he didn't have to. But he did. 

For as long as his heart kept beating.


End file.
